Cheswick Christian Academy's boys basketball team set aside the commandment about not stealing for a couple hours Thursday night and pilfered with pleasure in the Southwest Christian Athletic Conference semifinals.

The Chargers pressured their way to a 56-19 win over Portersville Christian and earned themselves a spot in the conference finals. No. 1 seed Cheswick Christian (17-9) will square off with No. 2 Evangel Heights Christian Academy at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Community College of Allegheny County's South campus.

Halfway through the semifinal, Cheswick Christian led 35-8.

“I think they couldn't handle the pressure we put on them on defensively,” Cheswick Christian coach Todd Rosio said. “We broke their spirits with that. They hung in there and competed for a quarter, and the flood gates opened up in the second.”

Andy Skledar led the way on offense for the Chargers with 23 points. Ian Swartz added 14 points, while Isaiah Malloy chipped in 10 points.

Rosio hopes Cheswick Christian's up-tempo defensive tactics will serve them well against Evangel Heights, which split its regular-season meetings with the Chargers.

“The main question will be, can we do that to them too?” Rosio said of overwhelming the opposition. “They have two big kids that could be a match-up problem for us. Physically, we don't have anyone that matches up to them. So we're going try to make those big kids run up and down the floor. Game one at our gym was a very fast game, and we were able to sort of wear them out. Game two at their gym was a much slower game, and we lost in overtime.”

Hockey

Armstrong 7, Chartiers Valley 6 — Nick Long capped a back-and-forth Class AA contest with a game-winning goal that came in the final 90 seconds of the third period. Long finished with two goals, while Christian Miller had two goals and an assist, and Hunter Grafton had a goal and two assists for the Riverhawks (13-5-1). Taylor Smouse made nine saves in net for Armstrong, while Anthony Safi had 33 stops for Chartiers Valley (10-11).

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